Invisible and Dumb
by Star Tsar
Summary: Huey has his first autistic meltdown since Della's return from the moon. Donald is still missing, the boys are no help, and she has no idea what to do. But her son is in pain, and she has to do something.


"Nothing's wrong, mom. Huey's just sperging out," Louie answered nonchalantly, and Dewey socked him hard on the arm. The ensuing yelp blended in nicely with the cacophony of pained groans and sobs emanating from behind the door to the boys' bedroom.

Louie rubbed his arm, mumbling, "That was a real punch-"

"Yeah, and it'll be your beak, next time," Dewey shouted, a subtle trembling in the timbre of his voice.

"It was a joke! Why don't you go in there with him if you want to act like a spaz," Louie stuck his hands into the pocket of his sweatshirt and leaned against the doorjamb, well aware of how close he was to crossing the line. "Huey thinks it's funny when I say that stuff, anyway."

Della could sense the grim seriousness of the situation, but had yet to fully appreciate it. She could only stand there, agog at the grotesque scene - the last thing she expected to find when she went to fetch the boys for dinner. Louie and Dewey were stood casually outside the closed door to their bedroom, their impotent bickering echoing down the otherwise silent hallways, while Huey could be heard to shriek and wail and destroy from within the room.

"Well, something tells me Huey wouldn't laugh about it right now," Dewey set his arms akimbo, and had leaned in so that he was only an inch away from Louie's beak as he scolded him.

"Get out of my face, Dewford," Louie pushed Dewey away, a little harder than he intended, and sent his brother stumbling back into the wall opposite the door. In an instant, Dewey hurled himself at Louie, but Della's maternal instincts were strong to override her shock and confusion long enough to restrain Dewey from attacking his little brother.

"Dewey, stop it!" Della's use of Turbo's 'Donald name' was more than enough to show him that she was serious.

"Louie started it!" the usual excuse.

"That's not what's important now, Dew," Della released him, but kept his hands in hers and looked him imploringly in the eyes. "Tell me why Huey's so upset."

Louie, still finding humor in the situation, chimed in, "He's got the 'tism."

"He's autistic!" corrected Dewey, more to chastise Louie than answer his mother's question.

Uncle Scrooge had told Della about Huey's diagnosis, but not about whatever was happening right now.

Dewey again faced his mother, "Sometimes he just gets too stressed, y'know, and he can't handle it so he freaks out."

"For awhile," Louie added, much less concernedly. "Then he's fine, back to normal. It really isn't a big deal, mom."

"What does Donald usually do, when this happens?" Della asked, and if the boys didn't realize she was out of her depth now, they must have already figured it out. (If they did, though, they didn't show it.)

Dewey answered, "He'll just watch Huey, or usually have us watch him, to make sure he doesn't start hitting himself-"

"What?!" was the sound of Della's day getting much worse.

Dewey winced, feeling Mom unwittingly clamp down on his hands, and quickly clarified, "Sometimes to stim, uh, to feel better, Huey will bang his hands against his head-"

"Oh, please," Louie shook his head. "He hasn't done that in two years, and he only does it now if he has his hat with him."

"Yeah," Dewey agreed, trying to reassure Della. "And you have his hat right?" They both looked at Louie.

Louie's self-assured, devil-may-care smirk melted away into an expression of distress as it dawned on him that, no, he didn't have Huey's red baseball cap. "Y-... you're the one who always grabs it from him!"

A very short, charged silence ensued before both of Huey's brothers scrambled to the door and panickedly opened it, just wide enough to see if he was alright.

Another pregnant pause.

"Oh, yeah. He looks fine," Dewey tentatively announced, with something akin to relief in his voice.

Della nervously stepped forward and poked her own head through the gap, feeling Dewey's cowlick on her chin. Quickly glancing around the room, she spotted her eldest son.

Huey did not look fine.

Pacing in a tight circle around the center of the room, crying in pained sobs punctuated by screeches and high-pitched groans, Huey was worse than Della had ever seen him. His ivory white feathers were drenched in sweat, and those on his arms and shirtless torso looked horribly ruffled, as though he had been trying to rip them out with his bill. His cute little wobbling stride had been replaced by an unnatural, jerking kind of march - like he was trying to rock back-and-forth and walk at the same time. Whenever he wasn't wringing his hands he was violently flapping them at his side, his fingers clenched and contorted in such a way that it had to hurt.

Worst of all was the look on his face. That inquisitive, wide-eyed grin that Della had come to adore had been replaced by the red, teary-eyed grimace of a duck so tortured and frightened that it almost seemed impossible for a duckling so young to bear it.

And it should have been impossible, Della thought, for a little duckling to feel so much pain that it could drive him to act like this. Just the sight of Huey's meltdown was enough break her heart. Then Della remembered what she spent ten years on the moon trying not to forget. The quiet horror of it struck her: this wasn't just any duckling. This was her duckling.

"Aw, jeez," Louie muttered under his breath. "Why does he always have to take his shirt off?"

Della instinctively rubbed her sleeve against her face, sniffling, and realized she had been crying the entire time. Then a wave of guilt came crashing down, drenching her to the bone. How could she just stand there and watch? Huey was in the worst pain of his life, and his own mother was just looking on like a spectator!

Della wiped away her tears and breathed in deeply, steeling herself. She forced the tenderest, most loving smile she could for Huey, and gently pushed passed her other sons into the bedroom.

"Hey, buddy," cooed Della, compassionate and lovingly as she slowly approached Huey with outstretched arms.

No reaction. Huey kept pacing, stimming, shaking his head - it was as if, like the rest of his life, Della wasn't even there.

"Yeah, uh, mom?" Dewey called from the doorway, where he and Louie still watched. "Huey really doesn't like people messing with him when he gets like this!"

Then Huey stopped stimming with his hands and grabbed his hat (the only piece of clothing he had on), and started tugging at the feathers on his head while repetitively putting the cap on and taking it off again.

"Uh oh," the other two triplets said in unison, and Della felt panic well up in her chest.

"Okay, honey?" Della asked, powerlessly trying to defuse whatever was about to occur.

Huey's stim of repeatedly putting his hat on quickly devolved into a clumsy display of forcefully pressing his hat onto the side of his head, and then slamming his fist into the same place he was pressing the hat.

"Huey, no!" Della ran up and threw her arms around his own, restraining him. Huey wailed and thrashed around in his mother's embrace, but she eventually wrestled him into a more comfortable hold - something like a hug - sitting on the floor with his back against her belly. He tried throwing his head back against her chest, but after the first few strikes Della curled in and brought her hands over his sternum, and he lost the room to maneuver.

Only a minute more of impotent struggling followed before Huey resigned himself to simply crying in his mother's arms. Della loosened her hold on the duckling, so that it was less than restricting but still firm, and was relieved to feel him relax with her.

But that relief didn't last long. Finally able to really sense Huey in her arms, Della felt the cold, damp sweat that had soaked him through to the down feathers. She felt every one of the powerful tremors that quaked through his little frame, and a subtle shaking from the chill. She felt every time his chest heaved from crying, and smelled the dank aroma of his matted, sweaty head feathers under her chin. Most of all, she felt his pain.

Della began to gently rock herself and Huey back and forth, whispering, "Shh, baby. It's okay."

They continued rocking in silence for a few minutes, without much perceivable change in Huey; he was still crying just as hard as when they started, but Della knew he was starting to feel better. She could just tell. Before now, she never realized that she could 'just tell' but, evidently, she could. Besides, Dewey and Louie had come back into the bedroom and were lounging around like they normally would, so they must have sensed he was getting better, too.

"Dewey, could you get us one of Huey's blankets? He's cold," Della asked, and her middle child was happy to oblige, climbing up to the top bunk of their bed and wadding up some heavy old quilt that must've come from one of the mansion's closets. He looked as though he considered throwing it down to them, but thought better of it and climbed down before handing it to her.

"Thank you, dewdrop," Della unraveled the blanket and gingerly wrapped it around her eldest, still rocking with him.

A few more minutes passed before Huey stopped shivering, and his crying eventually became quiet sobbing, then a series of sniffles. At some point he had gotten turned around in Della's lap, and was hugging her while she ran her fingers through his feathers.

Della lost track of time, sitting there with Huey. Dewey was zoned out in his bunk, and Louie was on his phone; miraculously, everything had become peaceful. It felt so serene, so normal, and in spite of what they had all been going through only a few minutes earlier. It all appeared very out-of-place, but felt so genuine at the same time. It was weird. Della liked it, though.

It was her family.

"You guys do know that dinner has been ready for twenty minutes?" said Webby, standing in the doorway.

All of her kids looked up in surprise at the realization (and Della herself couldn't help but get wide-eyed when she remembered), but only Huey looked embarrassed.

"Uncle Scrooge is getting sick of waiting-..." Webby noticed who Della was cradling in the middle of the floor. "Is Huey okay?"

"Oh, yeah… I'm fine. Great, even," weak-voiced Huey played it off, very nonchalant, and Della couldn't help but smirk at the way his cheeks reddened.

"Oh! Good! Well, I'm going to go tell them you're all coming, before Scrooge does something he'll-... well, something we'll regret," Webby set back down the hall and all the triplets stood up, readying for pursuit. Dewey was the first to follow, while Louie stretched and scratched after hopping off his bunk.

Della gave Huey one last hug before standing, herself, when a heap of red cloth struck him in the face.

Louie, snickering, said, "Why don't you put your shirt back on, Pubert."

This was one of the few times Della felt the urge to scold one of her boys, but she thought it better to defer to Huey. He gathered the red polo in his arms and looked solemnly at it for awhile, with a nervous Della not knowing what to expect. Then Huey smirked slyly at his youngest brother and let the shirt fall to the floor.

"Aww, does little Llewellyn need a hug from big brother?" Huey stretched out his wings, doffing the quilt in the same motion and putting his sticky, sweaty feathers on full display - to Louie's visible terror - before he started slowly advancing toward him.

"No! Hey! Huey, that's not funny, okay?" Louie slowly backed toward the doorway, holding his hands out to block any sudden grapples. "My hoodie still smells from the last time you did this!"

"You can run from me, Louie, but you can't run from your emotions!" Huey feigned a charge and Louie broke into a sprint down the hallway, Della giggling the entire time.

Huey turned back into the room and went around, picking his shirt and hat off the floor before giving his mother a smile and a hug. He seemed a lot better, even 'back to normal', but Della could see in his eyes that Huey was still shaken up from his meltdown, and could probably stand to spend a little more time cuddling with her.

"We can stay in your room, if you want, sweetie. I know a crowded dinner might not be your favorite place, right now," Della tried to reassure, still putting on her gentle 'mom voice'.

"Thanks, mom, but I think I might just take a shower, instead. You go ahead and eat with everybody," said Huey, much more timidly than he was with Louie, just now. It occurred to Della that it must be difficult to manage autism and still be the strong older brother.

Della held Huey a little tighter. "I'll bring a plate up, for after your shower."

"Thank you," Huey buried his face in her neck. "I love you, mom."

Della felt her tears coming back.

"I love you, too, Huey." 


End file.
